I used to be very active on the Story Forum between 2003 and 2005, as well as the old hotline server. I spent tons of time in Forge back in the day, but due to perfectionism, lack of perseverance, youth, etc., only a few of my maps ever saw the light of day. I made a map that became the first level in Ellio7t's "Where Angels Fear to Tread", and I made two maps for Eternal ("Core Done Blew" and that mountain-climbing dream level you have to play five times).

I finally got reacquainted with Marathon recently, and thought I'd start hanging out here a bit. I'm messing around with Weland and Vasara as well, so that might turn into something. Anyway, just thought I'd say hi.

Welcome back! Cool to see a few old Marathoners come out of the woodwork in the last few days. This place is pretty quiet but there's still some activity here and there. The metaserver still sees games almost every day if you're interested in multiplayer.

Good to hear you found Weland and Vasara, as they're honestly easier/better to use than Forge and its buggy visual mode, not to mention they have a few extra features peppered in as well. Hope to see some of your work sometime soon!

Windbreaker, I only ever played multiplayer online once or twice, but it definitely seems like I should try it again. I've downloaded a lot of the big netmap packs (netpacks?), and they're very impressive. Infra Apogee looks phenomenal. And I agree, while it was nice in Forge to effortlessly switch between draw and visual modes, Weland and Vasara (and I assume VML) are individually better tools. And it's so nice to have those Infinity restrictions lifted!

Crater Creator, thanks for the feedback. For Core Done Blew, you're right, the transparent glass panes are confusing. At least the level is consistent, in that I don't think there are any windows in the entire map that aren't solid. I really wanted the player to be able to see the power distributor room for a while before they got in there, but I didn't want them to be able to engage with any enemies in there. I could have found a better solution. I certainly wasn't shy about having Pfhor teleport in elsewhere in the level, so I probably could have only populated that room when you entered it.

As for the mountain dream level, it could have used a lot more optimization. While I knew that in Chapter 5 there would be monsters in the level, I never really took that into account when I made it. All the jumping was tested out primarily in visual mode in Forge, with tons of lines set to be opaque so as to not crash Forge. While I was making it, the idea was that there would be no negative space at all – nothing blocking your view, and the top of the mountain was supposed to be the tallest thing in the map. But in the end, I don't think it really paid off. Yes, from the bottom, the thing looks tall, but you can't see the top. And from the top, you can't really see down that far. Instead of placing the beginning and ending in opposite corners of the map, they should have been in adjacent corners, and it should have been possible to see the top from the very beginning. That also probably would have given me more leeway to employ negative space to break up some of the views without really hurting the visuals. And I probably used too many polygons, just in general. Larger polygons would have sufficed in many places. In my defense, I believe I was 15 when I made it, and I just thought it was so damn cool at the time.

Crater Creator, I see you were involved in EMR, which was always a big inspiration to me. What things did you work on?

I see you have thoughts on how your contributions to Eternal could have been better. If you feel like it, it's never too late to change them! Or anything else that you think could stand to be improved, for that matter; I kinda have a to-do list of things that the "seriously it's really actually finally done" version is still waiting on, and a lot of them are little map tweaks as suggested by Crater Creator and Ryoko in their respective reviews.

Back at ya - it's great to hear straight from the original mapmaker. I can also relate to making huge, taxing maps when I was younger.

I did indeed work on EMR. I only worked on EMR 3, though (released in 2007), so there's a good chance it's the earlier incarnations you remember.

I introduced Bill to lua and the wonderful things it could do: everything from earthquake effects to complex platforms to cinematic cameras. I updated some of the artwork, like wall textures and scenery, and did lots and lots of bug testing. My biggest addition, though, was the level Like a GAT Out of Hell, where I made a drivable hoverbike and built a new level to work with the new feature.

I'm going through a similar process now with Halathon. I had another 'aha' moment on something new the game could do, this time bridges; and built a level, this time Hang 'Em Low, to take full advantage of it. You can see Halathon's progress in this thread. I think you'll be impressed with a lot of the visuals thedoctor45 et al have been able to achieve.

Cool! I've actually played all three incarnations of EMR, but the Infinity version was by far the one I played the most. The new textures in EMR 3 look fantastic, and I played Like a GAT Out of Hell, very cool! Did you ever play Operation Vengeance?

And I checked out the Better Bridges thing, it looks awesome. Same goes for Halathon. Seriously, it doesn't even look like Marathon. I might have to look into this whole bridge business.

Operation Vengeance is a mid-length scenario from 2001 (like 10 levels? I think?) that used a ton of physics tricks to (clumsily) do things that we can do much more easily in Aleph One. The big things I remember are a cinematic camera (achieved by somehow making the player unable to move at all or pull out a weapon, and then sticking the player in flowing liquid) and having the player pilot a juggernaut on two occasions. The juggernaut was achieved by having the player only able to use the "juggernaut gun" (like the hoverbike) and having the player slowly, very, very slowly, fall from a great height. And you were always moving forwards. Still, it was tons of fun back in the day. I'm sure there were more tricks.